Path of Dragons 13 - Chapter 74 - A Wasteland of Renewal

The world ignited as dense flames rolled across the land.  When that wave crested, another replaced it.  Then, another after that.  Nine separate pulses of fire, each one hot enough to melt rock in seconds, scorched across the army.  And at its center stood Elijah, screaming in pain as his entire mind – every single leaf – was overwhelmed with the agony of being burned from the inside out.

Finally, his body gave out, and he became ash.

His consciousness drifted in the wind as he watched everything burn.  At the center of the explosion that came with Flames of Renewal, a dome of shimmering energy had manifested.  Inside were the familiar figures of the Synod.  Vhalor held his hand up high, his fingers clutched into a tight fist as he trembled with the strain of keeping Elijah’s flames at bay. 

But not every member of the Synod was so lucky.

In fact, two had failed to make it into Vhalor’s protective embrace.  Orvelis and Tessarion – the Unblemished and Sculpted Grace, respectively – burned only a few feet away from that green bubble.  Their armor, silver and gold, melted upon their bodies as their perfect forms were briefly on display.

One illusion shimmered, then flickered.  It only lasted a second, but in that instant, Tessarion’s true face was revealed.  Black and textured like an old tire, his visage was marred by a giant, pulsating tumor on his cheek.  After a moment, the illusion snapped back into place, but by then, Elijah knew the truth.

The Synod hadn’t escaped mutation.  No one in Ithalon truly did.  They just got better at covering it up.

Then, Tessarion melted alongside his twin sibling.  Their charred corpses fell to the ground before turning to ash and joining the accumulating, snow-like drifts that were the product of the burned environment. 

The nearby soldiers were no better off.  Nor did the few remaining octopus creatures survive the Flames of Renewal.  They all burned.

And for the briefest of moments, everything went still, save for a few embers drifting in the air.  In that instant of peace, Elijah felt content.  It didn’t last, though.  Within a second, a dense pulse of vitality erupted from the ash before it began to swirl.  Elijah’s consciousness – his spirit – floated at the center of it all.  The tree of his cultivation system became briefly visible, spreading its emerald branches across the entire battlefield.

For a single instant, it loomed just as incomprehensibly imposing as Treebie ever had.  Then, it shrank, disappearing bit by bit as Elijah’s body reconstituted itself.  At the same time, trees and flowers bloomed from the ashes, turning the once-ghastly battlefield into a verdant forest.  The trees shot to hundreds of feet tall, while the flowers filled the air with sweet smells.

And then, at last, Elijah let out a sigh.

The world sighed with him.

Unhurried, he glanced back to where Benedict had summoned his army.  The runic circle was untouched, and just out of range of Flames of Renewal.  Even then, the Warlock was nowhere to be seen.  A single body lay nearby, though, and it only took a single glance with Eyes of the Eagle for Elijah to identify it as belonging to Vaedren, the so-called Assassin King.

So, that part of their plan – using Benedict as bait – had worked.

Elijah turned his attention to the still-protected members of the Synod.  Or what was left of that governing body.  Four figures.  Vhalor.  Searathe.  Marith.  And Daelith.

Of the quartet, only Vhalor was truly dangerous.  That was why Elijah had taken such pains to separate Lurien from the group.  He was more than capable of destroying Elijah, and what’s more, he’d shown that he could contain Flames of Renewal.  For the plan to work, he’d needed to go away.

Now that he was gone, the success of Elijah’s plans had become far more plausible.

Initially, Elijah had planned to remain in the Shape of Embers, with an eye toward using Herald of Regrowth.  However, he now felt that would be a mistake.  Perhaps it was simple intuition.  Or maybe he’d subconsciously noticed some factor that would make all the difference. 

But he suspected that it was just his draconic nature roaring for relevance.

Elijah was happy to give it what it wanted.

He stepped toward the flickering dome of green energy, his body already transforming.  The distance between him and his enemies wasn’t great.  Just fifty feet or so.  But by the time he reached them, he had fully embraced his dragon form. 

His scales glinted as he loomed over them.

“Dragon,” growled Vhalor, his voice loud but muffled by his ongoing spell.

Elijah didn’t bother responding, mostly because he had nothing to say.  For all that Vhalor had power, his very existence disgusted Elijah.  He wasn’t certain why – not until he beheld that emerald armor.  Not until he considered the man’s title. 

He was known as the Emerald Tyrant – an oxymoron if ever there was one.  Certainly, that first word referred to a simple gemstone, but in the context of the system, it meant far more.  In those three syllables lay an ocean of meaning that coalesced into one word – nature. 

After all, there was a reason Elijah had been given the class of Emerald Archon.  There was also a reason for the color and composition of his scales.  He was a steward and champion of nature, and seeing Vhalor felt like he beheld a pretender to a throne only he understood.

A corruption of something that should have been uncorruptible.

From what Elijah had been told, Vhalor had taken the title from his father, the original Emerald Tyrant.  But he hadn’t earned it.  He didn’t deserve it.  And the very fact that he used it was a slap in the face of anyone who valued the truth of nature.

Elijah had always known that they would end up trying to kill one another.  It was inevitable.  But now?  He could see that it was far more than just finding themselves on different sides of a conflict.  Elijah felt an imperative to destroy him, just as he needed to eradicate abyssal monsters.

Perhaps that need was even stronger when it came to his intention to exterminate Vhalor.

As the shield continued to flicker, the people inside prepared for it to fall.  Spells swirled the local ethera as each of the remaining members of the Synod readied themselves for battle against a very committed dragon.

An ethereal cloud gathered overhead as a massive sunflower – with white petals – bloomed at Elijah’s feet.  Fat drops of rain fell upon his arched back, slicking his already-shimmering scales. 

The shield flickered one final time before disappearing.

Elijah was already moving.

He raced forward, only to smash into a hastily summoned mirror.  The shards cut through his scales, but the damage only lasted so long as it took Wild Resurgence and Blessing of the Grove to pulse.  From each shard leaped a reflection, and they wasted no time before pouncing.  Three attacked his wings, gnawing at the joints where scales gave way to wooden branches.  Another few went for his comparatively unprotected underbelly, while the rest went for his eyes.

Elijah paid them no mind, resolving to endure the damage – and the resulting pain – as he continued to compound a series of spells within his chest.  The first was Eternal Plague, which took the most ethera.  The second was Nature’s Claim, adding to the building burden.  And the third was Lightning Domain, sending tingles of electricity arcing throughout his body.

But before he cast those, he lowered his head and rammed his sharp, diamond-hard antlers into the closest target.

That turned out to be Searathe. 

Her mirror armor shattered under the blow as Elijah’s antlers pierced her body.  They erupted from her back in a violent shower of blood that splattered her allies.  Daelith – the Stillborn – exploded with white noise, filling the air with the stillness of a vacuum.  For a second, Elijah couldn’t breathe.  He could scarcely think, and he certainly couldn’t move.

But then, he slammed his Mantle of Authority against Daelith’s spell, shattering it as thoroughly as if he’d attacked a plane of glass. 

The Stillborn screamed in pain, clutching his head in his hands as he fell to his knees.  Freed from the nothingness, Elijah bucked his head, and with a wet squelch buried within the sound of shattering glass, Searathe went tumbling through the air.  Her body remained limp, and she couldn’t even muster the energy to scream.

Clearly, she hadn’t invested much effort into the cultivation of her body.

She hit the ground in a rough and chaotic tumble only a hundred feet away. 

Finally, Elijah let loose with his compounded spells.  A column of twinkling dragonflies and yellow spores erupted from his mouth, followed by a web of arcing lightning that spread out in a cone before him.  It hit Vhalor head-on, surrounding and enveloping him before subsuming Elijah’s true target.

Marith screamed, though to her credit, she didn’t let Elijah’s spells interrupt her casting.  A second later, she let loose with a spell, sending snaking rivers of vitality into the fallen Daelith and the all-but-unconscious Searathe.

Elijah used Vhalor’s brief distraction to bring his foot down on Daelith.  His talons bit deep into the Stillborn’s thin body, and soon enough, the sound of ripping paper joined the man’s screams.   After tearing his leg free, Elijah stomped on him again.  This time, his claw pierced Daelith’s head.

It resisted his weight for a second, but then, it burst.

Elijah felt another rush of experience.

But he didn’t have time to enjoy it, because Vhalor finally recovered.  Only a second had passed since the fall of his shield, and in that time, one of his allies had died.  Another had been incapacitated.  Both he and Marith were covered in biting dragonflies, each one inflicting potent afflictions upon them.

And that wasn’t even considering the fungal rot blooming within their bodies.

Or the lightning scorching through them and sending their muscles into seizures. 

It was an avalanche of damage, all in the space of a single second.  But Elijah had only just begun.

He threw himself at the stunned Vhalor, knocking him aside and sending him skipping across the terrain.  Without hesitation, he clamped his jaws down on Marith.  She managed to summon a weak shield, but it shattered nearly instantly.  Then, his fangs came to a halt as they pressed down on her brown robes. 

No matter how hard he bit, his teeth simply wouldn’t pierce the cloth.  It was too bad for Marith, then, that the cloth’s seeming indestructibility didn’t stop the pressure. 

Elijah couldn’t hear her bones snapping under the weight of his jaws.  Not over her screams.  But he felt them, like toothpicks breaking, one by one. 

He also felt dense pulses of vitality erupt from her as she frantically cast one healing spell after another.  That kept her alive long enough for Vhalor to recover.

Elijah sensed him coming, but he held onto Marith for a second too long.  He paid for it when Vhalor’s sword rammed through his side, slipped between his ribs, and destroyed his heart.

A spasm swept through Elijah as a thousand blades of ethera erupted from the sword, subjecting his insides to a blender of lethal attacks.  Fortunately, Elijah kept his wits about him long enough to continue casting his healing spells, which was the only reason he survived that massive assault.

He whipped his head toward Vhalor, who’d used an ability to enhance his size and strength, and released Marith.  The Healer sailed through the air with the speed of a cannonball, smashing into Vhalor’s chest with so much force that her every bone shattered under the impact.

She fell, unconscious but somehow still alive.

Elijah dove away, tearing a massive hole in his side as Vhalor’s ethereal blender came free of his body.  He tried to breathe, but his lungs had been destroyed.  So too had his heart.

But he knew what it meant to endure, even when his cultivation had broken his body down to single cells. So he could live through a few destroyed organs.  He kept his spirit anchored to his body and forced himself to move.  Nature’s Bloom joined his other ongoing healing spells, mending the damage. 

It would take some time to completely repair his organs.  But for now, all Elijah needed was to keep himself upright. 

Because he had an Emerald Tyrant to kill.